A plethora of mobile applications are available for use via smartphones and other mobile devices that operate on mobile networks. Many of these mobile applications, such as mobile applications that provide access to streaming video, social media content, and messaging services, generate a relatively large amount of network traffic.
To handle all of this network traffic, a mobile network must have sufficient network resources, such as power (e.g., transmitted power), central processing unit (“CPU”) capabilities, and channel elements. If the amount of network traffic exceeds a mobile network's ability to handle the network traffic, mobile network outages or delays may occur.
As the popularity of mobile applications has grown, the need for mobile network providers to identify mobile applications that generate high volumes of network traffic and therefore consume a high amount of network resources has become more apparent. For example, if a provider of a mobile network could accurately profile or quantify how a particular mobile application consumes network resources, the provider could more effectively manage finite network resource allocation, make upgrades to the mobile network, optimize network resource utilization, and/or more fairly set usage pricing for use of the mobile network.
Unfortunately, unlike mobile device-side resources that are directly and solely impacted by function calls of mobile applications, network resources are only indirectly influenced by mobile applications. Rather, network resources are directly influenced by hundreds of mobile network conditions or indicators, such as traffic volumes, signaling intensity, etc. Moreover, even if mobile network providers could focus exclusively on mobile applications, it would still be difficult to clearly separate the network resource usage of one mobile application from another due to the huge number of coexisting mobile applications and their simultaneous impact on the mobile network. Finally, a particular mobile application is used at different times of day and at different locations with different network conditions. Thus, the mobile application's behavior, network traffic characteristics, and ultimately, its network resource usage, may vary frequently. Such ambiguity, complexity, and dynamicity together have heretofore made it extremely difficult or impossible for mobile network providers to quantify or even relatively rank mobile applications with respect to network resource usage.